Yakutsk

In Yakutsk, at my friends dacha (vacation house), we had a lttle BarBQ.

The Lean River is clear water flowing to the Arctic an is over 5 miles wide in places.

In the Russian Far East. Aldan is a gold mining town across the Lena River and about 400 miles of very dusty, potholed dirt road from Yakutsk. This is the garden behind my friend's house in Aldan and the house next door.

In the Saka Autonomous Republic (Yakutia), Russia Far East. The traditional Yakut houses were built of vertically (but at a slight slant) set logs and sealed with a mud stucco.

Not far out of Yakutsk, Saka Republic. Yakutsk is about the same latitude as Fairbanks, Alaska but their winters are much colder and their summers much hotter.

In Russia, in the Sakha Republic, upstream from Yakutsk, along the Lena River... unforgettable! Sumi-e, Sumi on "rice" paper, unmounted

Aldan,s a gold mining town in Yakutsk. My friend's son's first birthday party!

The first time I traveled to Russia, then the USSR, was in 1989. Sculpture, simple posters, etc., with themes such as this: Славься, труд, Славься (To the glory of work, to the glory!) were, of course common. The attitude of many people I talked to, their comment on such posters, was; "The state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work." Pastel on colored stock, 12 by 12 inches.

I just digitized an album of pictures I took in the Russian far East. This is one of them.